[.::Tin Can::.]

If he doesnt see it then I dont know what kind of significance its going to play on the current ships. It just looks darker...

[DaBrain]

I know the shots are bad, but I can't believe you, if you say you don't see the difference.

I'll try to take better shots, but I'm not very good at doing so...

[DaBrain]

[Lightspeed]

Looks like:

Normal map

+Brightness - 30 %
+Emboss filter
+Texturizer

-edit: and now i see the problem with the looks.

The seams are the texturizer filter that creates a non-tileable texture, and the emboss filters on the dark demon parts where theyre completely unsuitable as it is a faint grey set of pipes and stuff, and has the emboss lines and way upped contrast with your maps.

[DaBrain]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
Looks like:

Normal map

+Brightness - 30 %
+Emboss filter
+Texturizer

Uhm wrong.
Actually it wasn't even my intend to make it darker.
It happend while I was playing around with it.
I like it very much that way. Looks dangerous...

And again 3 steps won't do for creating a texture. Not even for modifying it.

It's not very professional to guess the way it was made without seeing the actual map.

Originally posted by Lightspeed
Looks like:

The seams are the texturizer filter that creates a non-tileable texture, and the emboss filters on the dark demon parts where theyre completely unsuitable as it is a faint grey set of pipes and stuff, and has the emboss lines and way upped contrast with your maps.

Wrong again.  Just increasing the contrast will give you funnny colors all over the image. (Never forget: It had only 256 colors before)
Look at the old shading. It's ok, but it was limited to 256 colors. So the shading is far away from being smoth an the highlights on it are pale. (But it's good for only 256 colors)

The changed contrast is my attempt to improve the old shading. (It's done by hand, and has nothing to do with the contrast)
And also an attempt to get rid of the ugly look when a shinemapped ship is neither in the sun, nor in the dark. (When it's practically unaffected by the shinemap.

[Unknown Target]

Yea, ok, you like it, but the thing is, no one sees a difference besides a texturized and darker map. And the texturizer isn't even the right-looking one, there'sa different one that looks much more like pitted metal.

[DaBrain]

I always thought it should be some bone-like hull. Or at least somehow organic.

Originally posted by Unknown Target
no one sees a difference besides a texturized and darker map.  

That's not true. There are only 3 people (if I include LS) who don't see the difference.

But somehow I don't belive you... It's just too easy to see.

[Col. Fishguts]

In those screenshots I see no detail-difference. The maps are darker, more embossed and have this texturizer thingy. I don't say you didn't put significantly more effort into them....but looking at those screenies, the difference is marginal.
The memory drain outweights the smoother maps. Have you doubled the textures in width&height ? If yes, they use 4X the memory space as the [V] ones !

[Flipside]

S-Spline makes a spirited attempt at it, though this probs wasn't the best texture to pick

[DaBrain]

Some actual maps.

Edit: No release. No pictures that might be used.

[Flipside]

The second one looks pretty nice, the first one looks like it's on a security camera to me I'm afraid

Oh yes, another S-Spline effort

[Lightspeed]

@ DaB: and two points go off to FS2retail.

They look exactly like embossed & texturized originals.

Only thing is you resized them bilinear filtered and the retail images you posted unfiltered. Theres no inch of extra detail in the maps.

And using the 'brick' texture for the texturizing filter of the first map looks most odd.

Flipsides look exactly like the originals, resized, and they look better so --- uhm...

[DaBrain]

Yet they are too colorless and have very bad shading.

[Lightspeed]

Yet the shading's better than that embossed and texturized version.

[DaBrain]

Originally posted by Flipside
The second one looks pretty nice, the first one looks like it's on a security camera to me I'm afraid

Oh yes, another S-Spline effort

Edit: No release. No pictures that might be used.

The old one looks too comic-ish...

[Flipside]

S-Spline takes the original and breaks the shading down using spline curves, then it can adjust the curves more smoothly when enlarging than standard pixel enlargement.

What you see the is just a straight in-out process, my only complaint is that I think contrast could go up a fraction, but I think it doesn't do a bad job at what it does

I like some of the colour enrichment stuff you are doing as well, but I personally try to leave the FS2 textures looking exactly the same, but it's a matter of personal choice

[Lightspeed]

the new one looks so 'brickwall' and overpowered contrast-ish.

[DaBrain]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
the new one looks so 'brickwall' and overpowered contrast-ish.

Well I don't think they used a scyscraper-big metallplate...

Wich one do you personaly like more ?

@Flipside Staying with the old textures is ok.
After my first try with my improvement pack, I realized that the most people want to stay near the old look. Yet they want improvements... So I decided to stay closer to the original look. But it seems that there a few people who don't like this either...

So what should I do ? I really want to do something for the community.

[Lightspeed]

The retail one.

Actually, I did a little experiment since my last post. It took me exactly 1:30 minutes to be precise.



Guess what this is?

No, its not your image.

I did the following:

• open the retail graphic in Photoshop
• resize it to double size
• add a texturizing filter (Relief: 1, Size: 100%, texture 'brick')
• Contrast +22, Brightness -16

Now, compare that to your image:



Shocking how identical they look isnt it?

And I just ran three filters over it. Granted, your version boosts the contrast a bit more even, but its hard to find your exact settings.

-edit: to do proper high res maps the maps will have to be rebuilt completely - I could probably try to  get one map done to show what I mean. Resizing and applying filters really isnt the way to upgrade anything at all.

[Flipside]

I agree with you there Lightspeed, you cannot 'create' detail, you need to rebuild the entire texture, and doing all of them would be an utter nightmare